The Bicycle Exchange Board of Directors invites interested parties to attend our monthly (virtual) board meetings. You can observe the entire meeting and/or provide feedback, perspective and concerns during our new Open Forum agenda item at the end of the meeting. Here's the link to the next board meeting. Read on to learn more ...
The Silicon Valley Bicycle Exchange (SVBE) Board of Directors would like to invite any of our volunteers, employees or other interested parties to attend our monthly board meetings. We feel it’s important that all the people associated with the organization have the opportunity to understand our decision making processes, gain insights into new directions, provide important feedback, and interact with the board.
The Steering Committee is currently the primary method by which the board receives input from the SVBE community at large regarding strategic directions, possible new programs, things that need changing and other larger picture concerns. We strongly encourage interested people to participate in the Steering Committee but the board also wanted to give everyone another avenue for providing us feedback, perspective and thoughts on desired changes that may not necessarily be of the more strategic type usually discussed in the Steering Committee.
Feedback is especially important this year. We’ve made the conscious decision to continue the growth of SVBE to better serve our Mission. That growth will continue to be slow and deliberate, with the testing out of new ways to grow and relying on feedback to figure out which things are working and most importantly which things are improving our volunteer experience. The heart of SVBE has always been our volunteer core and must always be our focus. Growth can bring us new ways in which to serve the community we live in but that growth can never be at the expense of our volunteers.
Based on that reasoning, we’re adding an Open Forum to the board meeting agenda as well as the option for folks to observe the entire meeting.
The following link will allow interested people to view and listen in on the meeting and then at the end ask questions, make observations and bring up concerns during the Open Forum. During the regular portion of the meeting the observers' microphones will be muted so that the Board can get through the normal operational decisions and regular topics but during the Open Forum microphones will be unmuted individually for observer’s feedback.
Anyone with this link can join the meeting. Feel free to give it to anyone who may want to observe or speak at the Open Forum.
Generally the board will be allocating about 30 minutes total for the Open Forum portion of the meeting. Attendees are encouraged to email topics or questions in advance to the board (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) in order to assure themselves of a time slot. Each person will be given about 5 minutes for their topic. People who have emailed in their questions ahead of time will be given first preference in the Open Forum. If there is free time, after the time slots taken by people emailing in their topics ahead of time, the floor will be opened to others until the meeting ends. For new topics, the board may answer in detail, provide a brief answer, or make note of questions and follow-up at the next meeting.The board takes your comments seriously and, if appropriate, will follow up on them accordingly. Thank you for understanding that some things can require more time than a quick answer during the meeting.
For those planning on attending the board meeting, links to the agenda for the upcoming board meeting and minutes of previous board meetings can be found in the event calendar's board meeting listing. Note the agenda won't be posted until about 3-5 days before the meeting.
We hope that people will take advantage of the new Open Forum and give us the feedback that will allow us, with everyone’s help, to continue improving SVBE and serving our community.